The Fortunate Pilgrim - Mario Puzo [30]
A son of hers not yet eighteen, not married, not master of his own household, he dared to leave his own roof, his mother’s domain? What a disgrace to the family name. What a blow to her prestige in the neighborhood. What defiance of her just powers. Rebellion. Rebellion not to be borne.
Dressed in black, respectable in Sunday hat and veil, pocketbooked as befitted a matron, and short legs in brown cotton stockings fastened by garters that cut into the thighs, Lucia Santa went out on the blazing streets and walked up Tenth Avenue to 36th Street, where the Le Cinglatas lived. As she walked she whipped up her anger for the scene she would have to make. That little slut, that mealymouth, who twenty years ago had cried in church, making such a fuss that she would have to sleep with a man she had never seen. Del-i-cato. Oh, how awful—oh, how terrible—oh, ah, ah. Lucia Santa smiled grimly. These people who gave themselves airs. That was the true instinct of the born whore. Marriage vows and legal papers so that you could hold your head up, look everyone in the eye, rich or poor, that was important. As long as there was no disgrazia. Then if someone insulted your honor you could do murder with a clear conscience. But this was not Italy. She put away these thoughts, bloodthirsty as any greenhorn’s.
But truly, that was what America could do to a respectable Italian girl who no longer had parents to govern her. She was a woman now, the Le Cinglata. But what airs. What graces she had given herself. Oh, those were always the sly ones.
And her son. America or no America, seventeen years old or not, working or not working, he would obey his mother or feel her hand on his mouth. Ah, if his natural father was alive there would be real blows—but then, Lorenzo would never have dared leave a paternal roof.
The shade of the Le Cinglata tenement brought relief. Lucia Santa rested in the cool dark hallway, with its familiar musty smell of rodents, and gathered up her strength for the climb up the stairs and the battle awaiting her. For a moment she felt a weakening despair, a great sudden awareness of her vulnerability to fate and life—her children alienated by foreign ways and a foreign tongue, a husband so erratic that he was a liability in the fight for survival.
But such thoughts led to disaster. She ascended. No son of hers would be a gangster, a criminal sucked-out jellyfish to an older woman without shame. For one moment in the dark hallway, in those murky stairwells, Lucia Santa had a terrible vision of electric chairs, of her son bleeding, stabbed by the Sicilian or the jealous husband. By the time the Le Cinglata door opened, her swiftly coursing fearful blood had made her ready for battle.
But from the very first she was given pause. In the door stood husband Le Cinglata, heavily gray-mustached, in a clean white shirt and black suspendered trousers swelled by his paunch. He was not even pale from his short stay in jail.
Now Lucia Santa was in doubt. With the husband home, what was her son doing here? Could it all be gossip? But that she did not believe, especially when she saw the woman Le Cinglata standing by the table. The look of an enemy was on that face, a defiant guilt mixed with a strange jealousy.
This woman dressed in black, except that her face was thinner and younger than Lucia Santa’s, could be Lorenzo’s mother. That a woman her age should dare corrupt a child. Could they both have been so young once and she so innocent?
“Ah, Signora,” the man Le Cinglata was saying. “Come sit and have a glass of wine.” He ushered her to a white metal-topped table. He poured a glass